For three days, the skies above Civitas Prime held their silence. The multiverse, once screaming through rifts of raw energy and time-tearing war, seemed to pause. Not for peace. But for breath. As if reality itself were trying to understand what it had just survived.
In the heart of the city—where steel towers kissed the heavens and the ruins of battle still smoldered—stood the surviving heroes. No fanfare. No parades. Only the quiet echo of broken things being rebuilt.
Naruto leaned against a cracked support beam outside what remained of the Central Chamber, arms crossed, eyes toward the fractured horizon. The sky had healed—but only on the surface. Beneath it, chakra currents twitched like nerves still reacting to trauma.
"Feels fake, doesn't it?" he muttered.
Beside him, Gojo Satoru gave a sideways grin. "Silence always feels like a lie."
Across the plaza, Goku floated a few feet off the ground, legs crossed, hands resting gently on his knees. His aura was dim, almost dormant, but there was tension in his posture. Not fear. Readiness.
"You feel it too," he said aloud. Not a question.
Saitama stood on a half-broken wall nearby, grocery bag hanging lazily from one hand. "Mmm. Something's twitchy."
Luffy, pacing across a metal beam overhead, stopped. "Energia's not gone. It's hiding. Playing quiet."
Yuji Itadori and Megumi stood near the temple spire, inspecting a strange glyph that had emerged overnight—one that shimmered in five energy colors, none of them stable.
Then the sky cracked.
It didn't start with light. It started with absence. A sucking silence that erased the birds, the wind, the pulse of the world. Then, a line of nothingness stretched from horizon to horizon, black and hungry.
Naruto was already in motion. "Everyone, brace!"
The line erupted. A shockwave burst outward—no sound, only force. Time folded like origami. Buildings twisted. Water boiled. The sky peeled open, revealing a second sky beneath it—bleeding with stars that didn't belong.
"That's not a portal," Sasuke said, appearing beside Gojo. "That's a fracture. A second one."
Above them, a shape emerged.
A cloaked figure drifted through the wound in the sky, no wings, no aura, only weight. Their presence made the air tremble, not from power, but pressure. As if gravity was remembering something it had once obeyed.
They descended slowly. No face beneath the hood. Only void. Their voice was soundless, yet every hero heard it clearly in their mind.
"The Veil cracked once. Now it shatters again. The True Source reclaims its breath."
Goku shot up, appearing directly in front of the being. "Who are you?"
The being tilted its head.
"I am the Curator of Collapse. Guardian of the Unwritten Fold. Herald of the True Source."
Luffy tightened his fists. "Yeah? Well, herald this."
He launched forward, Gear Fifth activating mid-motion, stretching reality around him.
But the Curator raised one hand.
Luffy stopped mid-air. Not frozen—just paused, as if his moment had been cut from time and pinned.
"Whoa," Saitama said. "Okay, that's new."
Goku narrowed his eyes. "Let him go."
"You are unstable. But not dangerous. Not yet." The Curator turned to Goku. "You, however, are no longer dormant. And that is a problem."
A second rift opened—not behind the Curator, but around Goku. A perfect circle, pulsing with silver flame and negative space. Goku tried to move, but his aura collapsed. Ultra Instinct flickered. His breath caught.
"What... is this?"
"The Null Zone," the Curator replied. "A cage built for those who remember."
With a soundless pull, Goku vanished into the rift.
"GOKU!" Naruto shouted, charging.
But the rift closed.
Silence returned.
The Curator turned toward the others. "You will not see him again unless you cross the path of broken gods. Be warned. The Source does not forgive resurrection."
Then it was gone. As if it had never existed.
Rain began to fall.
In the Null Zone, Goku floated in darkness. No gravity. No light. Only a slow, steady heartbeat—not his own.
A glow formed before him. A shape. A being.
It was not monstrous. It was not divine. It was—
Familiar.
It looked like him.
But taller. Eyes of burning white. Hair like liquid flame.
"You weren't supposed to wake," it said.
"Who are you?" Goku asked.
The figure didn't answer. It walked forward, each step echoing in the dark.
"You have forgotten. They all have. You are not a Saiyan. Not entirely. You are the last Echo. A vessel forged from the shards of war. A memory given flesh."
Goku clenched his fists. "What are you talking about?"
"Energia did not birth you. It used you. You were the key to the First Fracture. And now... they want you again."
The light around the figure flared.
"You must remember what you were. Before Kakarot. Before Saiyan. Before even Ki."
Goku's vision blurred.
He saw stars dying. Cities burning. A throne made of suns. A blade of infinite light. His own hands holding it. Screaming. Falling.
Then darkness.
Back in Civitas Prime, the alliance gathered in a war room beneath the city.
Sasuke traced the edge of a glowing map. "These points... where the sky bled. They're symmetrical. Like a seal."
Gojo frowned. "A second seal being broken."
Naruto stood, fire in his eyes. "Then we find the Curator. We find Goku. And we break whatever's trying to rewrite our fate."
Yuji looked at his hand. Sukuna's markings flickered.
"They're not rewriting it," he said. "They're restoring it."
The Luminary appeared in the doorway, glowing faintly.
"Then you must decide," it said, voice low. "Do you want to fight fate? Or become what it once feared?"